Is Social Media the Ultimate Massage?

So should we just throw away old media and marketing rules? That's the question posed by Marketing Magazine today and it's a question that deserves an answer.  New social media such as blogs and tweets show a great focus on brands, but Marketing Magazine asks if this really creates a relationship with the customer, if the customer wants a relationship with a brand.

Well if we read up on what the Globe and Mail says, experience is a key part to marketing to women. Since a number of companies, especially video game producers and car manufacturers, marginalize their focus on the female demograph, maybe this is a moot point. However, to all the industries that still want to sell their product to more than half the population, now may not be the time to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

There are a number of ways people can both embrace the new while continuing to create the 'experience' that the female demograph seems to prefer. In fact, there are websites specifically dedicated to marketing specifically to women. There is even a website dedicated to Marketing to Women Online, and it is a perfect demonstration of merging old with the new.

The new forms of media may change the methods, but the rules of the game remain the same, in most cases. However, one notes that recent events do demonstrate that use of these new online tools could have enhanced marketability. Social media spread BP oil's crisis and there was no viral response, no antibody. BP oil used the old methods of responding to a two-prong crisis. The first and most important crisis was of course the spill and the second was their responsibility to stakeholders to remain profitable. BP oil stocks were already going to suffer due to the spill. Had they responded to it with new social techniques, they could have stopped hemorrhaging value.

Imagine if they had admitted the mistake and raised a call to arms to have this handled as quickly as possible. In addition to hiring the usual people to do cleaning, asked for environmental volunteers to step forward. BP oil pays for transportation from a single rally point and uses them to assist with the easier parts of the cleanup, manual labour, et cetra. It involves BP in the local community, creates interaction between them and a loosely-tied demograph, and creates the experience that BP oil is looking for the planet. So it does everything their marketing campaign does, but for a little less money.

So Marketing Magazine is right, new social techniques are important and even vital. However, they cannot function by themselves. These techniques must be integrated into existing marketing. Using only social media, or refraining from it completely are both ways that one risks becoming impersonal and distant from their demographs.